The Falcon
by CorellianAngel
Summary: A collection of drabbles and stories from the viewpoint of an ancient modified Corellian YT-1300 freighter called the Millennium Falcon. A bit of TFA canon and suggestions of the old Expanded Universe for depth. Imagine the memories of a century old starship with powerful illicit computers aboard that have never been erased properly... Some humor, angst and family.
1. Chapter 1

**Rusting**

* * *

She slumbered.

Sand piled in crevices and corners. Swirling drifts languidly draped over her scarred skin. It darkened and adhered to the trails of grease and coolant that streaked her hull, allowing a hardened crust to form along sensitive hydraulics and sensor points. The fraying tarps covering her drive vents flapped uselessly in the scorching wind.

The slowly corroding hulks of her enemies littered the landscape about her dozing frame. Their hulls hollowed, burnt and haunted. Old foes slowly eviscerated by the local scavengers. The remains of her allies were here too, their noble sacrifice evident by the towering hunks of Imperial durasteel that lay splayed and gutted among them. _Rusting_.

So long ago…

Nearly a quarter of her lifespan had passed since she had soared in battle amongst them here. Streaking along the hulls of Star Destroyers, a whirling grey blur of velocity and firepower. Her quad turrets pounding mercilessly at any enemy fighter daring to cross their sights and all the while weakening the defenses of the monolithic enemies beside them. The motions of the combatants combined deadly dance resulting in the slow spectacular tumble of the Imperial ships into the gravity of the wasteland beneath them.

Her circuits momentarily flickered with a microburst of electrical memory. The exultant warwhoop of her Corellian captain resounding back through the reams of data from that battle as surely as it sounded through her corridors back then. The play of his dexterous fingers across her board, coaxing every nano particle of power from the drives. They were of the same jet-fueled blood, the same birth-world, the same _soul_.

A digital flutter went through her logic circuit. If she could sleep, she could have a soul. Right?

Had she chosen this fate? She didn't know. 'Choice' was not something attributed to her kind. Calculations and data analysis could provide a set of probabilities on events or strategies. But unless it was vital to the function of her mechanical components she was supposed to be helpless, totally lost to those who sat at her controls. Her fate was completely out of her hands. _Never tell me the odds_.

At least apparently.

They had separated, she knew. The heroes of Yavin and Endor gone from each other. Nearly all of them split in a different compass direction. The pain of their parting as acute as the tragedy that had perpetrated it. A gradual sundering of the bonds formed almost forty standard years ago. Bonds forged in war, loss, redemption and rebirth. She even had been informed in a data burst by that damned 3P0 unit that the close companionship of the two droids, over three quarters of a century together, had also collapsed. The plucky R2 astromech powering down into a memory defragmentation process that could last years given his hundred year-long uninterrupted memory cycle.

Her own memory banks too tipped at full. Over a century of her sins and heroics buried under navigational data and cabin atmosphere composition reports. Every being that had set foot in her ancient womb recorded by their use of oxygen, exhalations, the timbre of voices in her microphones, their weight on her loading ramp, the biological data in her medical bunk, and even the shifting pressures on her frame as the beings moved along her decks was in her deep memory logs. She could tell who was at her controls by the speed and pattern of their movements across the glowing console as much as their hand print on the hatch access.

And now she was back here, also now a legend separated from that storied group, from their family ( _her_ family), from her Captain. Resting, no, _rusting_ , in this graveyard of metal, sand and despair. The droids gone; the Gambler, the Jedi, the Princess, the Wookiee, and her beloved Captain…All gone. Her corridors empty of voices all but for the whisper of memories and sand.


	2. Chapter 2

**Meeting Ben**

* * *

The first time she officially met him was when he was four days old. It was past the middle of the local night cycle. Swaddled tight in a soft gold green Kashyyyk-made blanket and smuggled quietly into the vast hangar in the firm crook of his father's arm. Well over three kilograms, still bruised and a little blotchy from birth, his long lashes a thick dark line as his eyes screwed shut against the glare of the overhead lights.

The exterior illumination under her irregular saucer shaped hull brightened at the approach of the proximity chip on the father's chrono in a preprogrammed greeting, guiding the two beings safely to the access grid near the main ramp. A half dozen X-wings, a transport rested around the battle-scarred freighter. A handful of service droids remained quietly focused on their tasks, awaiting an incoming perimeter patrol.

The ship's auditory sensors picked up a rustle of sliding fabric, a light grunt as the father shifted the newborn infant upright to his shoulder. The external security visuals showed a lanky human male fumble in the blanket's opening momentarily, loosening it to gently withdraw a plump fist. Finally free the last three fingers splayed out, thumb and forefinger pinched together instinctually. The infant clutched for the radiant warmth and already familiar scent of his father. The man meanwhile was pressing his own palm to the hatch access. The panel beeped, then his long fingers punched in a lengthy code on the keypad with a blur of familiarity.

[Acknowledged: Solo, Han – Captain, Alliance General] The faintly glowing orange Aurebesh letters scrolled by rapidly on the small screen. [Welcome Home Captain]

With another electronic chirp there was a hiss of the hydraulics, and then whirring the ramp began to lower from the belly of the old ship. As it reached the hangar deck a curved door at the top of the ramp rolled up, clanging slightly as it reached the top. A dimly lit corridor lay beyond, illuminated by crude hanging task lamps amidst dingy deck lighting and stubbornly flickering strips on the upper portion of the ship's curved walls. The man did not yet enter and continued his authorization coding at the hatch.

[Request entered for biometric security scan process …Please wait]

He finished after a moment and the authorizations were sorted through her security protocols. The Captain meantime reached back with his now unoccupied hand and absentmindedly tucked a rumpled white shirttail into the back of his dark trousers, working his way two-thirds around his waist until the console chirped again. The right front third of the shirt now stuck out awkwardly over his waistband. His hand came up again, brushed once through his unruly mop of light brown hair and paused over the keypad.

A quick glance around the hangar around them ruled out any potential witnesses. Only a few wandering power droids and the distant form of the deck officer huddled over a datapad at the far end. The first-time father gently nuzzled the raven haired infant's soft cheek with his crooked nose, speaking in a voice silky tender, the pitch slightly higher than anyone had ever heard him utter. "Welcome home Ben".

The Millennium Falcon dutifully added her Captain's unfamiliar new voice data from the external mic for analysis and filing in the passenger voice recognition database. The recognition module had ceased functioning decades before, but the data was compiled anyway.

His soft voice shifted into a conspiratorial whisper. "Now don't tell your mom, but I think you need to meet my other love. But the Falcon doesn't know you yet. Sooo..." Han drawled. The baby was held up in front of the hatch's visual sensor. The Captain hit a button. "State your name for the record, soldier." the commanding tone was an exhausted version of what days before might have once resembled a general's.

The newborn babe did, of course, not respond as requested. Instead his Moro reflex kicked in and both arms shot out as he startled. He screwed up his face as if to let out an unholy wail, hiccupped a half dozen quick breaths as his right fist flailed wildly until it found purchase near his mouth, to be sucked on noisily as he settled again.

Han quickly thrust his head into the viewing frame next to Ben's. "Ben Solo" he whispered quickly. The baby's dark eyes slitted open as the bleary-eyed father continued, "Future Captain. Hero of the battle of swaddling, changing and keeper of awakedness at all hours." Satisfied, he pried Ben's dripping fist from the infant's mouth. The babe instinctually arched his lips and head, following to latch onto the available knuckle of his father's left hand as it cradled his small shoulders and neck. Han pushed Ben's wet right hand splayed out against the palm sensor. "Authorize" his voice shifted to its normal level.

Ben choose that moment to slide his fist out of the elder Solo's. He gave a small cry and curved his body back, resisting against the strong arm that held him and with a thrust his upper torso toppled sideways onto his father's broad shoulder. His slobbery hand reached out and seized his father's left eyebrow in a primal grip; a tiny wet thumb digging into the sensitive flesh of the eye socket.

Han stumbled backwards, bare feet tripping on the bottom edge of the ramp. He leaned against the hydraulic support cylinder and winced, trying to pry his son's fingers away. "Ow, ow…Ow! "

The Falcon's array of external security sensors automatically recorded it all in humiliating detail without question or judgement.

(The Wookiee would find it later.)


End file.
